Humility, Prophecy, Oscar

James Cameron and “Avatar” were the butt of so many jokes last night at the Oscars—from Ben Stiller’s blue-face getup to Juan José Campanella (the director of “El Secreto de Sus Ojojs,” which won best foreign film) saying that he was grateful to the Academy for not counting Na’vi as a foreign language. There was even a call back to Cameron’s last big Oscar night, in 1998, when he won eleven awards and crowned himself “the king of the world.”

But last night, “Avatar,” which was nominated for nine awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, took just three, for art direction, visual effects, and cinematography, and Cameron wasn’t invited to the stage at all. The speech he gave while accepting the award for Best Director at the Golden Globes had to stand. “I’m gonna make this as brief as I can, because frankly I have to be som’n fierce,” Cameron said folksily, after taking the statuette from Mel Gibson (his neighbor, Cameron let the audience know). “I’m actually not well prepared, ’cause frankly I thought Kathryn was going to get this, so I’m kind of wingin’ it.”

At the Oscars, what had looked like humility came to resemble prophecy. Kathryn Bigelow, who was briefly married to Cameron in the nineties, won the directing Oscar for “The Hurt Locker,” making her the first woman to receive the award. Bigelow, for her part, didn’t seem all that well prepared, either. After delivering an elegant speech for Best Director, she seemed to be in disbelief, and repeated the speech when, a few minutes later, “The Hurt Locker” won Best Picture.